Re: Best way to store my data

I'm impressed.
As I thought I will have to purchase a replacement Motherboard, CPU & RAM. Just double checked the spec's of mine and it only supports a max of 2GB RAM ha.
I would like one that can support 12 SATA + 1 or 2 OS HDD so I can Mirror.
I've also read that some OS's support installation to a Compact Flash card connected via a CF to IDE convertor, and that this gives better performance.
Do you know if OpenIndiana can support SATA expansion cards? I was thinking if I got a Motherboard with say 8 or 10 SATA I could purchase one of these:

When you say "I also use dual port Intel gigabit NICs lag'd together", what do you mean by Lag'd? Is this a way of getting twice the bandwidth to the switcher by sending the data down two separate Ethernets?

Re: Best way to store my data

Originally Posted by 337Manni

I'm impressed.
As I thought I will have to purchase a replacement Motherboard, CPU & RAM. Just double checked the spec's of mine and it only supports a max of 2GB RAM ha.
I would like one that can support 12 SATA + 1 or 2 OS HDD so I can Mirror.
I've also read that some OS's support installation to a Compact Flash card connected via a CF to IDE convertor, and that this gives better performance.
Do you know if OpenIndiana can support SATA expansion cards? I was thinking if I got a Motherboard with say 8 or 10 SATA I could purchase one of these:

When you say "I also use dual port Intel gigabit NICs lag'd together", what do you mean by Lag'd? Is this a way of getting twice the bandwidth to the switcher by sending the data down two separate Ethernets?

Personally, I would skip the CF to IDE adapter as you'll be running ZFS on the root OS and that would probably be pretty hard on a CF card. Also, I think it would be slower in your use case, so just use an old hard drive or laptop drive or small SSD as the OS drive. If you tell me what your budget is and what hardware you currently have (case, PSU, etc), I'd be happy to put together what I would use for parts.

Yes, Openindiana / Solaris supports adding SATA Expansion cards, those are what I referred to as HBAs (Host Bus Adapter). The card I mentioned I use works great. It can be had for around $60-$70 on eBay and can connect up to 8 hard drives. That card is the IBM m1015. A cheaper option, but one that doesn't support drives larger than 2TB is the IBM BR10i. Those can get as cheap as $30 on eBay. You do need to make sure that your card is supported in Solaris. I would HIGHLY recommend one of the two cards I listed as they both work very well and will allow the connection of 8 hard drives via SFF-8087 forward breakout cable, something like this.

I would flash either of those two cards with IT firmware to ensure that the hard drives are passed start through to the OS. Here's the m1015 directions, and the BR10i (this is basically the same card as the Intel SASUC8I so don't be confused by them only mentioning the Intel card in those directions).

LAG is IEEE 802.3ad, and it allows you to aggregate NICs into a group. This is good for both redundancy and can support streaming a gigabit speeds to multiple clients at once. You will not see 2x gigabit speeds to one client though.

Re: Best way to store my data

I like the idea of using two NIC's LAG'd together. One of the concerns I had was if several clients connected to this NAS in the future, that the performance would be hit.

I didn't think I'd go down the route of CF, just wondered if it was worth considering for performance.

I already have 2 x 80GB IDE HDD's I can use for the OS.
I have a 12bay enclosure with 2 additional internal 3.5" bays, all with caddies and SATA cables
It came with a redundant power supply.
3Ware 8506 PCI-X 12Port SATA RAID Controller (Only supports an array of up to 2TB)
24 Port GB Switcher
Wireless N ADSL Router

Just really need:
CPU
RAM
Motherboard
and depending on MB a HBA.
2TB HDD's
I do have 2x2TB HDD's in my HTPC, but thinking about it I will need to keep these as they have the data on them. I'll have to setup the RAIDz2 and move the data from these to the NAS then.

I don't really have a budget in mind.
I would just like a system capable of supporting 12 Sata HDD'S
The OS on 2xHDD's Mirrored (IDE or SATA), or even 1x SSD if it helps performance.

I have thought of installing Ubuntu with MythTV as a backend, so looked at PCIe ports for TV tuners in future, but I think I will setup my main HTPC for this and just leave this as a NAS with OpenIndiana.

This is a great mix of budget and power while giving you lots of room to expand in the future. But, doesn't have an IDE heads on the motherboard, so that would rule out your older IDE drives. Your OS isn't going to be slow on any of those setups, but I'd be using a ZFS mirror if you can swing it. Your data array will be doing all of the work, so don't blow a bunch of money on an OS hard drive.

Otherwise, you could go with something like an Intel G620 + GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 + RAM. This is definately cheaper, but is missing features like ECC memory support, IPMI KVM, VT-D, and AES-NI support if you ever want to switch to Solaris and run ZFS encryption.

Re: Best way to store my data

How would I go about virtualizing Ubuntu and Openindiana on ESXi? I’ve never heard of ESXI before.
Would this allow me to run Ubuntu + MythTV backend and Openindiana at the same time?
Could I install TV tuners in this system?
If so it sounds like a perfect solution!

Thanks for taking the time to spec out a system.
I have a case which supports an E-ATX board, I feel that a mATX Motherboard is limiting my expandability in the future if I can install TV tuners and other hardware. I would be happy to spend more if it gave me a perfect setup, which is upgradable in the future (More PCIe ports, greater memory in the future).

Originally Posted by rubylaser

This is definately cheaper, but is missing features like ECC memory support, IPMI KVM, VT-D, and AES-NI support if you ever want to switch to Solaris and run ZFS encryption.

What would these be used for? Excuse my ignorance, but apart from ECC Memory I've never heard of these before.

Re: Best way to store my data

ESXi is a VMware Virtualization Hypervisor. If you've never used virtualization before, this would be a bit of a stretch for you. Here's a document that covers that concepts.

This board is a very stable, and would support (3) IBM m1015's + a TV tuner if you'd like (or use a USB tuner as another option). If you have a VT-D enabled CPU, you can pass through devices directly to the virtual machine. This is required for some things to work properly. If you went this route, you'd pass through the m1015's to the Openindiana box and pass through the tuner card to Ubuntu for it's Mythbackend. I'm not sure what else you'd want to put in there, so I still think this is a fine platform for your needs.

You can get 32GB of RAM in this motherboard if you go with 8GB DIMM's. Kingston makes a kit that's perfect for this board (KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G).

To describe all of those acronyms in depth would take some time, but here's the summary:
1. IPMI - gives you KVM over IP. This allows you manage the server remotely (including entering the BIOS, powering off/on, etc). For a home user this probably isn't super useful, but it is nice for remote powering on.

2. VT-D - I described passing through cards above, and you'd need VT-D or AMD's Vi technology to do this. Wikipedia describes VT-D like this, "An input/output memory management unit (IOMMU) enables guest virtual machines to directly use peripheral devices, such as Ethernet, accelerated graphics cards, and hard-drive controllers, through DMA and interrupt remapping." That is a pretty good description of it's features.

3. AES-NI - Are Intel's Advanced Encryption Standard Instructions. Intel describes this as, "used to accelerate the performance of an implementation of AES by 3 to 10x over a completely software implementation." The main benefit of this would come if you ever wanted to encrypt your ZFS pool. This would allow all of the encryption to happen in hardware making it much faster (you'd need a pool version of 30, which would require the use of Solaris 11, and would not be portable to other Operating Systems at this point. I've avoided using pool version 30 for this reason).

Re: Best way to store my data

The MBD-X9SCL-F-O mATX board you mentioned is hard to get in the UK. I can only find it for as low as £130 ($210) and they all seem to be out of stock.

I was thinking if I got an ATX or E-ATX board, I would have more PCIe ports for 2/3 TV tuners (Don't like USB tuners), 2x NIC's, 1x HBA and other options I may have in the future.

I can see VT-D being useful. IS this just a CPU or CPU+Motherboard feature I should look out for?
I don't think I would use AES-NI though. I can't see a reason I would want to encrypt the ZFS Pool.
The IPMI, I'm not sure about. The NAS would be on 24/7, or I would look at using wake-on-LAN to turn it on, and a command to power it down if possible? I take it Openindiana could still be managed with Napp-it without IPMI? It would only be if I put Ubuntu on it I would use it?

I will have to do more reading when I get chance. I have to save up for the hardware yet so there’s no rush.

Re: Best way to store my data

VT-D needs a motherboard + CPU combo, so you do have to watch out for it. Yes, Napp-it doesn't rely on IPMI at all, they are completely unrelated. If you're not going to run Ubuntu in a second virtual machine and just make it an Openindiana fileserver, then you don't even need to worry about VT-D processors/motherboards.

Re: Best way to store my data

Just an update.

Since last posting I’ve been reading into ESXI and VM’s and it has made me stream several long term projects into one. I originally set out to build a NAS then later a media server then CCTV DVR. I’m now looking to build an All-In-One Server/NAS. My aim is to have: